


Five Things That Never Happened to Elizabeth Swann (and one thing that did)

by Elizabeth Perry (watersword)



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Genre: 5 Things, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 04:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5954335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watersword/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Perry





	1. Chapter 1

"Look! A girl! There's a girl in the water!"

The air is full of oily smoke and the empty sea is suddenly cluttered with debris and wreckage. Elizabeth tries to stay out of the way, she really does, but when the sailors have hauled the girl's limp body aboard and Lieutenant Norrington has quelled their bickering over the cause of the ship's destruction, her father takes her hand and presses it between his. "Look after the child, Elizabeth," he says, and her heart leaps. "I leave her in your care."

Elizabeth nods, and kneels next to the girl. She's white as the salt clumped in her eyelashes, and her skirt hem is unraveling, and as Elizabeth begins to wipe her face clean, her eyes fly open. "It's all right," Elizabeth manages to say. "My name's Elizabeth Swann."

"Rose Turner," the girl murmurs, and her eyes flutter shut again.

"I'll watch over you, Rose," Elizabeth promises, and she's never meant anything so much in all her life. She chafes Rose's wrists a little — she thinks that's what you're supposed to do when people faint, and she doesn't have any salt of hartshorn, like the little bottle Mama carried in her reticule. But Rose doesn't wake, and Elizabeth loosens her collar as best she can. "Oh," she whispers, when she sees the gleam of gold at the other girl's throat, and the coin with the grinning, snarling skull dangling from it. "You're a pirate."

The men are coming back, the jolly boats bumping against the side of the Lydia and their voices drifting to where Elizabeth is kneeling. She glances up, and snatches the necklace off Rose's neck, stuffing it deep into her pocket, and lies without a moment's thought when Papa asks if the girl's said anything. "Her name's Rose Turner," she says. "That's all I found out."


	2. Chapter 2

For some reason known only to the Lords of the Admiralty and St Brendan, James Norrington's promotion ceremony has been scheduled for the tail end of hurricane season, and the night before, a storm sweeps over Port Royal from the south-west. Elizabeth goes to bed early, and lies there, listening to the wind shriek and the shutters rattle, until she can't bear it anymore. If dawn comes at all, it won't be for hours, but she lights a lamp, wraps herself in a dressing-gown, and goes down to the kitchen.

Caesar, her father's majordomo, is dozing in the chair by the fire. "Miss Swann," Estrella says, scrambling up, and Elizabeth shakes her head.

"No, no," she says. "I couldn't sleep. Are you having tea?"

"Miss, you should have rang," Estrella insists, and Elizabeth allows herself to be coaxed into the morning parlor. Well, it is morning; the clock in the entryway chimes heavily, twice. There is tea in a bone china cup, and a sugar-loaf with muslin draped over it to keep the flies away, and Elizabeth sits quietly, obediently, and lets Estrella fuss. She sips her tea, and listens to the storm tear itself out, and tries not to think of the false bottom of the drawer in her bedroom, hidden under a stack of old lesson-books. No doubt most girls would have love-letters there, or pressed flowers, or a button passed discreetly from a laundry-maid, but Elizabeth's never nerved herself to get rid of the skull-badge she'd stolen from Will Turner as a child.

She must slip into sleep at some point, because her father wakes her when he comes in. The storm is still raging, shingles flying off the roof at irregular intervals, and the governor is issuing instructions to send proxies to Port Royal notables. "Most irregular, and what London will say I don't like to think — Elizabeth! Are you all right? Awake already? I would have thought you'd take the chance to stay warm and dry in bed, my dear, the weather's dreadful and doesn't look to better." He kisses her forehead, and turns to Caesar. "The box in my study, fetch it," he says, and pulls her out of the sopha she's curled up on. "I have a gift for you," he says, and she smiles, fatigue swept away. "I had hoped today would be its debut, but you'll have to be patient. But still, anticipation is half the pleasure, isn't it?"

Of course, within the box is a dress, a lovely confection of yellow-sprigged muslin and Dutch lace. "Papa," she says, and kisses his cheek. Estrella and Octavia make quick work of dressing her, and it's marvelous, her new favorite dress, a daring neckline and full sleeves, just right for falling over her wrists when she flirts a fan. She can't wear it today, of course, this is a dress that needs to be shown off in sunlight and admiring glances, and today she'll have to content herself with her old green day-dress and the household accounts and perhaps some extra sugar in her tea if she wants to feel luxurious. Tomorrow, when the storm is gone, and James Norrington has a new sword and a new rank-loop on his sleeve, will be time enough.


	3. Chapter 3

Afterwards, when Elizabeth has a glass of straw-pale Madeira and has paid Lydia Morgan a compliment on her new fan, now-Commodore Norrington grasps her elbow. She turns, intending to smile and say something meaningless and neighborly, but there are beads of sweat on his upper lip and his temples are damp. "Commodore," she says instead. "Will you be kind enough to escort me outside? It is a trifle close in here."

He inclines his head, and they walk into the sunshine, his grip on her arm tighter with every step. She chatters brightly, harmless gossip, comments on how poorly the choir sang at last week's service, musings about what she should set as the menu for the next dinner-party the governor hosts, until they are well away from the press of the crowd. "You look dreadful," she says then. "James."

It is not often that Elizabeth is alone with a man.

He tries to take his arm away, but she lays a bare hand on his fingers. "I'm sorry to be forward," she says; her father is not wrong to say she is impertinent, and James has never been anything less than polite to her, even when she teased him. "But truly, you seem ill."

They are near the parapet on the west side of Fort Charles, and the fresh breeze from the sea has not recovered Norrington's spirits. He is taller than she is, and his uniform sets off his shoulders admirably, but his face, under the sun- and wind-burn that all officers acquire after a sixmonth of service, is pale. "I hope you are not struck down by any sort of fear that you are inadequate to the position bestowed on you," she says, looking about frantically, trying to catch a glimpse of her father, or even a servant she could dispatch to fetch her father. "You have earned it a dozen times over, I am sure, the title is merely paint upon the frieze of your accomplishments, and I trust that you will have a long and happy career, and will retire in some far-distant future to a cottage with whatever lucky woman you bestow your hand upon, perhaps even —"

Norrington makes a horrible sound, like a laugh from a nightmare creature, and she whips her head around just in time to see him collapse in a heap over the edge of the parapet and plummet to the rocky shore, and the grinding waves, below.


	4. Chapter 4

"I want you to leave," she says, and hardly has to consider before adding: "And take me with you."

The grizzled man standing opposite her, the filthy, chattering monkey on his shoulder, sneers. "I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means no."

She sneers right back, and takes Will's medallion out of her pocket. "I think you'll find, Captain, I can pay for my passage."

"My hold's bursting with swag," he says, but he's taken a half-step toward her. "What's one bit of shine more or less?"

" _This_ bit of shine is what you're been searching for," she points out, the warm feeling of superiority blossoming inside her chest. It's like haggling over a bolt of Chinese silk, really; bargaining is all the same. "I recognize your ship, I saw it eight years ago on the crossing from England." Every one of the men around her has gone still, eyes gleaming in the occasional flare of light from shore. The monkey cocks his head; she could almost believe he understands what she's doing.

A breeze stirs the sail hanging overhead, and Captain Barbossa hisses between his teeth. "Did you, now," he says, but it's not a question.

She shrugs — an indelicate gesture, but it conveys what she needs it to. "Well, I suppose if you won't take it, there's no point in me keeping it — hardly the King's shilling, is it?" She dangles the necklace over the dark waters of the sea, and smiles.


	5. Chapter 5

The cave smells of burnt flesh and wet metal. She had felt like Juno, rushing down from Olympus to defend her city on the plain, and now — now her skin feels too tight and her belly is cold. "We should return to the Dauntless," she manages to say; Lieutenant Gillette laughed at her an hour ago, but she doesn't want him dead. She doesn't want any of them dead.

Barbossa's body is a dark pile on the other side of the mound of gold. She can't bring herself to turn her back on it.

Will nods. "Your fiancé will be wanting to know you're safe," he agrees, and her mouth fills with acid. He wasn't supposed to know, who told him, she was going to — and that's what brings her up short.

Jack is wearing a crown perched askew on his head. "If you were waiting," he calls, and she glares at him. He glares back.

"Will," she says. "Will, I love you and I'm sorry, I made a bargain and I won't go back on it, but —"

She'll have to release James from the engagement, she thinks through the shocking feeling of Will kissing her. She'll have to insist. She'll have to apologize.

She's not sorry.


	6. Chapter 6

Elizabeth's lips feel raw and swollen. She and Will have been kissing, and laughing, and starting half-sentences broken by more kissing, since her father left, and now the sun is well below the horizon.

"Elizabeth," Will says, "Eliz— no, no, I'm trying to be serious."

"And here I thought you were in love," she teases, but she sees he means it, and steps back, holding his ridiculous, adorable hat over her bosom. "Very well, what is so important?" Even in the dark, she can smell him, the hot metal and smoke of the forge underlying his sweat; she is wearing one of her old, soft dresses, without any corset, but her skin burns where he has touched her.

"Elizabeth," he says again, and swallows. A thrill runs through her at the sound of her name in his voice. She hopes she never gets tired of it. She hopes she has the chance to be tired of it. "Miss Swann, will you do me the honor —"

She bursts into laughter, she can't help it, it spills out of her like blood from a vein. She checks it as soon as she can and drops the hat; she needs her hands to cradle Will's face, that dear, foolish face she had feared lost to the locker. "Will," she says, "weren't you listening?"

"I want you to say yes," he says, and kisses her again, kisses her breathless, kisses her dizzy; she clings to him for a moment after his lips leave hers.

"You," she says, hardly able to bear it. "You, Will, I choose you, always, always, darling, yes, always yes, I've been waiting for you to ask since I can remember —" not that she can remember anything before this moment, this touch of Will's fingers on her palm, this hammering of blood in her temples.


End file.
